Spectre and Meltdown fallout: 32 lawsuits filed against Intel

On Friday Intel filed its annual report in which it disclosed that there are a total of 32 lawsuits filed against the company, in connection with the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities. Thirty of the lawsuits are class action claims against Intel by its customers, both in the USA and abroad. The two other suits were filed by Intel shareholders concerning the violation of financial securities laws.

As background to the above mentioned lawsuits, it is important to remember the following things:

Intel admits that in June 2017, a Google research team first notified it about various security vulnerabilities (now commonly referred to as 'Spectre' and 'Meltdown').

On 3rd January 2018, information on the security vulnerabilities was publicly reported, before software and firmware updates to address the vulnerabilities were made widely available.

Intel Chief Executive Brian Krzanich sold 889,879 shares in the company on 29th Nov as per a trading plan adopted on 30th Oct, making roughly $39 million from the sale, well before the details of the flaw were made public.

In general the Intel class-action filing customers "claim to have been harmed by Intel's actions and/or omissions in connection with the security vulnerabilities," says Intel in its report (PDF page 124 of 201). Negative effects of the Spectre and Meltdown flaws are, among others; systems that are vulnerable to hacking unless patched (and patches might not become available), various performance penalties on systems that are patched, the inconvenience and costs of patching / updating said systems.

One set of securities class action plaintiffs alleges that Intel made false statements about products and internal controls after it was aware of the vulnerabilities. Another set of plaintiffs says that certain Intel board members and officers "breached their duties to Intel in connection with the disclosure of the security vulnerabilities and the failure to take action in relation to alleged insider trading". Both of these complainants are looking for monetary damages.

The problem is he's been selling off the stocks he's received as a bonus ever since he's been getting them, the only thing that really changed was when he sold them off and the amount, that's sure to get noses twitching but I'll eat my hat if anything comes of it as i imagine it would have been run by some very well paid and talented lawyers before it was signed off.